Violent Incidents Among Selected Public School Students in Two Large Cities of the South and the Southern Midwest, 1995: [United States] (ICPSR 2027)

This study of violent incidents among middle- and
high-school students focused not only on the types and frequency of
these incidents, but also on their dynamics -- the locations, the
opening moves, the relationship between the disputants, the goals and
justifications of the aggressor, the role of third parties, and other
factors. For this study, violence was defined as an act carried out
with the intention, or perceived intention, of physically injuring
another person, and the "open... (more info)

This study of violent incidents among middle- and
high-school students focused not only on the types and frequency of
these incidents, but also on their dynamics -- the locations, the
opening moves, the relationship between the disputants, the goals and
justifications of the aggressor, the role of third parties, and other
factors. For this study, violence was defined as an act carried out
with the intention, or perceived intention, of physically injuring
another person, and the "opening move" was defined as the action of
a respondent, antagonist, or third party that was viewed as beginning
the violent incident. Data were obtained from interviews with 70 boys
and 40 girls who attended public schools with populations that had
high rates of violence. About half of the students came from a middle
school in an economically disadvantaged African-American section of a
large southern city. The neighborhood the school served, which
included a public housing project, had some of the country's highest
rates of reported violent crime. The other half of the sample were
volunteers from an alternative high school attended by students who
had committed serious violations of school rules, largely involving
illegal drugs, possession of handguns, or fighting. Many students in
this high school, which is located in a large city in the southern
part of the Midwest, came from high-crime areas, including public
housing communities. The interviews were open-ended, with the students
encouraged to speak at length about any violent incidents in school,
at home, or in the neighborhood in which they had been involved. The
110 interviews yielded 250 incidents and are presented as text files,
Parts 3 and 4. The interview transcriptions were then reduced to a
quantitative database with the incident as the unit of analysis
(Part 1). Incidents were diagrammed, and events in each sequence were
coded and grouped to show the typical patterns and sub-patterns in
the interactions. Explanations the students offered for the
violent-incident behavior were grouped into two categories: (1)
"justifications," in which the young people accepted responsibility
for their violent actions but denied that the actions were wrong, and
(2) "excuses," in which the young people admitted the act was wrong
but denied responsibility. Every case in the incident database had at
least one physical indicator of force or violence. The
respondent-level file (Part 2) was created from the incident-level
file using the AGGREGATE procedure in SPSS. Variables in Part 1
include the sex, grade, and age of the respondent, the sex and
estimated age of the antagonist, the relationship between respondent
and antagonist, the nature and location of the opening move, the
respondent's response to the opening move, persons present during the
incident, the respondent's emotions during the incident, the person
who ended the fight, punishments imposed due to the incident, whether
the respondent was arrested, and the duration of the incident.
Additional items cover the number of times during the incident that
something was thrown, the respondent was pushed, slapped, or spanked,
was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten
up, cut, or bruised, was threatened with a knife or gun, or a knife or
gun was used on the respondent. Variables in Part 2 include the
respondent's age, gender, race, and grade at the time of the
interview, the number of incidents per respondent, if the respondent
was an armed robber or a victim of an armed robbery, and whether the
respondent had something thrown at him/her, was pushed, slapped, or
spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else,
was beaten up, was threatened with a knife or gun, or had a knife or
gun used on him/her.

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Study Description

Citation

Lockwood, Daniel. Violent Incidents Among Selected Public School Students in Two Large Cities of the South and the Southern Midwest, 1995: [United States]. ICPSR02027-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2012-08-22. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02027.v1

Methodology

Study Purpose:
Adolescent violence is partly attributable to
escalating sequences of events in incidents that culminate in outcomes
unintended by the participants. Although the young people who engage
in violence often do not intend the outcome, they nevertheless suffer
the consequences -- either the harm that comes from the victimization
or from the punishment that comes from being the aggressor. The
problem is increasing because, while the rates of some types of
violent crimes are declining, the risk of being a victim of this type
of crime has risen since the mid-1980s among juveniles aged 12 to
17. Little research has been conducted on the nature of violent
interactions among middle- and high-school students, especially
qualitative ethnographic studies conducted from a "social
interactionist" perspective, which explains behavior though the
analysis of interaction among people. Therefore, this study of violent
incidents among middle- and high-school students focused not only on
the types and frequency of these incidents, but also on their dynamics
-- the locations, the "opening moves," the relationship between
disputants, the goals and justifications of the aggressor, the role of
third parties, and other factors. For this study, violence was defined
as an act carried out with the intention, or perceived intention, of
physically injuring another person, and the "opening move" was
defined as the action of a respondent, antagonist, or third party that
was viewed as beginning the violent incident. The violent incidents
were analyzed to create general models of the sequence or pattern of
events in the interactions among disputants. Information about the
typical steps that culminate in violent incidents, the most common
locations where the incidents take place, and how the disputants and
others are related can be used in designing and improving violence
prevention programs. The patterns of events identified can also
indicate areas for intervention, with a focus on the opening moves.

Study Design:
Data were obtained from interviews with 70 boys
and 40 girls who attended public schools with populations that had
high rates of violence. The interviews were open-ended, with the
students encouraged to speak at length about any violent incidents in
school, at home, or in the neighborhood in which they had been
involved. These tape-recorded conversations explored incident dynamics
from the young person's perspective and were concerned with behaviors,
emotions, values, and attitudes at different steps of the violent
encounter. The 110 interviews (Parts 3 and 4) yielded 250 incidents,
almost all of which occurred within 12 months of the interview and
half within 6 months. Using formal methods of content analysis, the
interview transcriptions were reduced to a quantitative database with
the incident as the unit of analysis (Part 1). Incidents were
diagrammed, and events in each sequence were coded and grouped to show
the typical patterns and sub-patterns in the interactions. Also
examined were the explanations students offered for the
violent-incident behavior. Explanations were categorized as
"justifications," in which the young people accepted responsibility
for their violent actions but denied that the actions were wrong, and
"excuses," in which the young people admitted the act was wrong but
denied responsibility. Every case in the incident database had at
least one physical indicator of force or violence such as throwing
something at the other, pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, kicking,
hitting with a fist, hitting with an object, threatening with a gun or
knife, or using a gun or knife. The respondent-level file (Part 2) was
created from the incident-level file using the AGGREGATE procedure in
SPSS.

Sample:
Fifty-eight respondents were selected at random from a
student body of about 750 at the middle school. Another 52 students
from the alternative high school volunteered. Only students who
received permission from their parents to participate were included in
the study.

Data Source:

personal interviews

Description of Variables:
Variables in Part 1 include the sex, grade, and age
of the respondent, the sex and estimated age of the antagonist, the
relationship between respondent and antagonist, the nature and
location of the opening move, the respondent's response to the opening
move, persons present during the incident, respondent's emotions
during the incident, the person who ended the fight, punishments
imposed due to the incident, whether the respondent was arrested, and
the duration of the incident. Additional items covered the number of
times during the incident that something was thrown, the respondent
was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist
or with something else, was beaten up, cut, or bruised, was threatened
with a knife or gun, or a knife or gun was used on the
respondent. Variables in Part 2 include the respondent's age, gender,
race, and grade at time of the interview, the number of incidents per
respondent, if the respondent was an armed robber or a victim of an
armed robbery, and whether the respondent had something thrown at
him/her, was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with
a fist, or with something else, was beaten up, was threatened with a
knife or gun, or had a knife or gun used on him/her.

Response Rates:
Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales:
None

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1998-12-10

Version History:

2012-08-22 A Restricted Data Use Agreement form was added to the documentation files that can be downloaded from the study home page.

2006-03-30 File CB2027.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.